The talks in Islamabad ended without a deal, but the temptation to read that as either failure or breakthrough misses what actually happened. If anything, the speed with which another round was being discussed suggested the opposite: that the gap between the United States and Iran had narrowed, not widened. And yet, just as quickly as expectations of an immediate follow-up built up, the process appeared to slow. No meeting this week, but delegations are shifting along with messages being passed quietly.

On the surface, it looks like hesitation. It is not.

The talks may not be happening in Islamabad this week, but the negotiation has not paused; it has gone quieter and closer to Tehran. The negotiation is active, but the stage has shifted to internal calibration in Tehran. What we are seeing is not a slowdown, but a relocation of the process to where it actually matters.

The United States can afford speed. It can escalate and negotiate at the same time, push timelines, float deadlines, and still return to the table within days. For Washington, a deal is a strategic outcome. For Iran, it is something else entirely. It is political, ideological, and deeply tied to a narrative built over decades - one shaped under Ali Khamenei and reinforced by institutions like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

That asymmetry is the key to understanding what’s happening.

The lack of an agreement in the first round may also reflect the need for Iranian participants to assess how any potential outcome would be received back home. The first round did not just test positions at the table; it likely forced Iranian negotiators to confront a harder question: how much of this can actually be sold back to the home audience?

Most importantly, how it would be received by the IRGC in Tehran - the central pillar of Iran’s power structure, as well as by hardline clerical factions in the city of Qom and, of course, the domestic constituency that has unwaveringly supported the regime’s nuclear stance for decades.

If Iran were to move toward a deal in the very next round, it would not mean it suddenly changed its position overnight; it would mean the groundwork to absorb that shift had already been weighed internally. The first round did not produce an agreement for a reason. Tehran could not afford to walk into a room, negotiate for a few hours, and walk out appearing to have diluted a position it has defended for decades.

With Pakistan now carrying the process forward, holding discussions closer at home allows Tehran to manage both negotiation and narrative simultaneously

With Pakistan now carrying the process forward, holding discussions closer at home allows Tehran to manage both negotiation and narrative simultaneously

That pause was not indecision; it was calibration. The real question for Iranian negotiators is not just what they can agree to, but how much of it can be carried back home without unsettling a system where authority is dispersed across power centres like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the clerical establishment.

Events like the killing of Qasem Soleimani have only deepened the ideological weight attached to Iran’s posture. Any engagement with Washington now carries not just strategic implications, but symbolic ones. Iran has been here before. When it signed the nuclear deal in 2015 under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the agreement was not universally embraced at home. Hardline factions questioned its terms, and support from the top came with visible caution.

That episode showed that even a negotiated outcome does not automatically translate into internal consensus.

The question of domestic acceptance in Iran is not just about public sentiment; it is about power. The influence of hardline structures like the IRGC cannot be ignored. This is not speculation; it has been acknowledged from within. In a leaked 2021 recording, Javad Zarif openly admitted that diplomacy often operated under the shadow of the military establishment, even conceding that he could not always align diplomatic moves with military priorities. That reality has not disappeared.

Which means any deal is not just negotiated, it has to pass through a system that does not always think in diplomatic terms.

So when we talk about Iran “taking time,” it is not hesitation; it is a necessity. Because the real question is not whether negotiators can agree in Islamabad, but whether that agreement can survive the journey back to Tehran.

At the same time, the urgency coming from Washington tells its own story. If a deal does come together sooner rather than later, the United States would, in effect, secure its primary objective, putting a lid on Iran’s nuclear trajectory. And for Donald Trump, that is more than enough to frame it as a win.

That also explains why the space for negotiation is likely to open up elsewhere, whether on sanctions relief, frozen assets, or even managing tensions around the Strait of Hormuz. Those are not side issues, but they are more flexible than the core question of nuclear capability.

Even Iran’s external environment reinforces this pressure. Partners like China and Russia may back Tehran diplomatically, but their priorities, energy stability, economic continuity, and avoiding a wider conflict, naturally align with de-escalation. Moscow has already signalled that the current moment should be used to resolve the dispute, while Beijing has stayed quietly engaged through Pakistan’s mediation. Iran’s partners may stand with it, but they are not built to carry the cost of a prolonged standoff.

Pakistan’s position adds another layer to this. Its ability to maintain a working balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been one of the quieter stabilising factors in this crisis. That balance has held so far, but it rests on restraint from all sides.

The longer the confrontation stretches, the harder it becomes to sustain that equilibrium without being pulled into clearer alignments. The burden of sustaining this balance no longer lies with Pakistan alone; it increasingly lies with Iran’s choices.

Pakistan has managed to hold the middle so far. But if the conflict deepens, that middle disappears, and with it, the space for balance.

It is in this context that Pakistan’s role moves from hosting talks to actively carrying them forward.

With Pakistan now carrying the process forward, holding discussions closer at home allows Tehran to manage both negotiation and narrative simultaneously. At the moment, a high-level delegation in Iran from Pakistan, led by its military leadership, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is not just carrying messages and finalising the context of the agreement.

As part of Iran as a state, it is part of a broader process of internal alignment. The optics of these engagements matter just as much as the substance.

Such interactions create the space to present any eventual outcome not as a concession, but as the result of sustained engagement, pressure, and negotiations. It allows the leadership to show that it did not walk into a room and give up its position but was part of a process in which its stance was heard, contested, and ultimately recalibrated.

In that sense, these back-to-back engagements are not just diplomatic activity; they are part of the narrative Iran will rely on when it explains the deal to itself.

The talks, then, have not slowed down. For now, they have simply moved to where the real decision has always been.

Not in Islamabad. But inside Iran.

© The Friday Times